Speech delivered by SACP General Secretary, Cde Blade Nzimande, on the occasion of the celebration of the 88th Anniversary of the SACP, 02 August 2009, Harmony Stadium, Virgina.
29 July 2009 marks the 88th anniversary of the Communist Party in South Africa. Launched in Cape Town in 1921, the Communist Party of SA (as it was then known), was the first communist party on the African continent. The immediate inspiration for the CPSA was the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the subsequent launch (in 1919) of the Communist International with its headquarters in Moscow.
88 years ago, world capitalism was in deep crisis. The crisis had provided the conditions in which, as Lenin so aptly put, there was a possibility to make a rapid socialist advance in the weakest link of the imperialist chain - Russia.
88 years later, world capitalism is once more living through one of its most serious periodic crises. Today's capitalist crisis is multi-fold - it is simultaneously a financial crisis, a productive crisis and a crisis of global sustainability. The capitalist accumulation path of the last three centuries has taken the whole of humanity to the brink of ecological disaster and the depletion of natural resources. Despite its crisis, global capitalism remains powerful, and it is constantly manoeuvring in order to retain its power.
But, for the first time in three decades, capitalism has lost its confident global ideological hegemony. All over the world, people of diverse creeds and ideological persuasions are realising that a different world has to be possible. In these circumstances, South African communists, and communists around the world have new challenges and responsibilities. In addressing these new challenges and responsibilities, we can confidently build on our 88 fighting years.
The founding members of the CPSA in 1921 were militant white workers and radical intellectuals, many of whom had broken with the South African Labour Party in 1915. Like Lenin's Bolsheviks, these militants had split with social democracy on the grounds of principled internationalism.
In the very first year of its existence, the CPSA was confronted with a dramatic challenge. In 1922 white mineworkers on the Rand struck against the Chamber of Mines' attempt to dilute the artisanal privileges of white mineworkers, by employing blacks in some categories of mine work - but at a considerably lower wage. The mine-owners were, of course, not motivated by non-racialism, but by profit maximisation.
The response of the white mine-workers was militant, and the strike quickly spread right across the Rand to include tram-workers and municipal workers. The Rand Revolt of 1922, as it became known, was partly influenced by the Bolshevik Revolution and by militant socialist rhetoric - the Red Flag was flown, and anti-capitalist slogans were advanced. But it was also influenced by the recent memory and traditions of the Boer struggle against the British. Armed commandoes of workers were formed in Johannesburg and the East Rand, and the police and army were attacked and weapons stolen.
Unfortunately, while white worker anger was directed partly against the mine-bosses, it was also directed in a racist manner against black workers. The young CPSA, with its roots among progressive white trade unionists, sought to emphasise the class struggle of the white workers, and to condemn racist attacks on black workers. But it was unable really to succeed in this regard, and the strike was enmeshed in the contradictions of white workers - they were at once exploited by capitalism, but privileged by their colonial racist status. The strike was crushed by Prime Minister Smuts using the army and even the airforce to bomb workers entrenched around Fordsburg.
The 1922 Rand Revolt compelled the CPSA to begin to think strategically and organisationally in a more profound way about the concrete realities of SA. Already by 1924 the majority of CPSA members were black. But it was in 1929, under the influence of debates and resolutions in the Communist International, that the CPSA adopted the so-called "Native" or "Black Republic" thesis. This was the strategic perspective that argued that, in the colonial reality of South Africa, the socialist struggle was deeply enmeshed in the struggle for basic citizenship and democratic rights for the black majority. The national democratic struggle and the realisation of a "Black Republic" (i.e. democratic majority rule in SA) were necessary conditions for an advance to socialism.
The adoption of this strategic position - which in its broad terms remains the guiding strategy of the SACP - laid the basis for a remarkable eight decades of alliance with the ANC. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the ANC was a relatively weak and largely elitist formation. Part of the Comintern's Black Republic thesis for SA reads as follows:
"The Party should pay particular attention to the embryonic national organisations among the natives, such as the African National Congress. The Party, while retaining its full independence, should participate in these organisations, should seek to broaden and extend their activity. Our aim should be to transform the ANC into a fighting nationalist revolutionary organisation against the white bourgeoisie and the British imperialists, based upon the trade unions, peasant organisations, etc., developing systematically the leadership of the workers and the Communist Party in this organisation."
With a few minor adjustments for language and to take into account a changed reality, this strategic perspective remains absolutely relevant in the present. It is this strategic perspective that has guided the Communist Party in South Africa for 80 years. And it is this strategic perspective that has been the spectre that has haunted all manner of opportunists, reformists and imperialist lackeys over the decades - down to our more recent experiences of the 1996 class project, of narrow BEE public resource plunderers, of COPE opportunists, and of liberal media commentators like Patrick Lawrence and his ilk. They all share one thing in common - they fear the influence and mobilisational capacity of the SACP. They fear the vanguard role of the SACP, and they fear it, because they know the resonance of our positions on the great majority of South Africans.
Guided by our strategic perspective of a National Democratic Revolution as THE road to Socialism in SA, communists in SA have been in the forefront of pioneering almost all of the great revolutionary values and traditions of our struggle.
Non-racialism - it was Communists in SA, guided initially by our core Marxist principle of internationalist solidarity, who pioneered the traditions of non-racialism which are now a cornerstone of our new democracy. While the ANC from its inception was committed to a non-racial SA, it was only in the 1980s that its membership begun to be opened to all South Africans, black and white. But from its earliest years, the CPSA actively practised non-racial policies AND non-racial membership. Indeed, for many decades the Communist Party was the ONLY political party in SA that was non-racial in its membership.
From the earliest years, South African communists also clearly understood that principled non-racialism was not just a question of "liberal" rhetoric about equality - genuine non-racialism in South African conditions required active affirmative action measures - including the consolidation of a black leadership cadre and the empowerment of racially oppressed workers and peasants. These active de-racialisation measures included:
Political education, and working class cadre development - from the 1920s, the Communist Party pioneered night schools and literacy classes to empower ordinary workers and to help to build a black working class leadership cadre in our Party, and in the national liberation and trade union movement. TW Thibedi was one of the outstanding figures in this early political education work. This adult education work was never just seen as a matter of "skills" transfer in a narrow sense of that word, but it also always had a Marxist ideological foundation. These traditions continued over many decades, in different forms and answering to different needs as the strategic and tactical reality shifted. The role of SACP members (among them Jack Simons and Comrade Mzala) in the political education work in our MK camps in Angola and elsewhere is justly celebrated and remembered. Other SACP cadres, among them Govan Mbeki and Harry Gwala, played a leading role in the traditions of cadre development and political education, right under the noses of the apartheid jailers in Robben Island and in other prisons.
Progressive journalism - over its 88 years the Communist Party has sustained a strong tradition of progressive journalism - using its own official publications, including, "Umsebenzi" (first published in the in 1920s as "The South African Worker"), "Inkululeko" (originally edited by Edwin Mofutsanyana in the early 1930s), and the The African Communist (whose 50th anniversary we will be celebrating this year). Communists like Govan Mbeki, Ruth First and Brian Bunting also played the leading role in the progressive newspaper The Guardian and its various successors all of which were banned by the apartheid regime in the course of the 1950s.
Revolutionary trade unionism - from the early ICU days of EJ Khaile, Jimmy La Guma, and Johnny Gomas, through the generation of JB Marks, Ray Alexander to Billy Nair and to younger party militants, communists have been in the forefront of organising workers, and of forging traditions of revolutionary trade unionism here in SA.
Popular mobilisation and people's power- in our earliest years, Party cadres like Edwin Mofutsanyana and Josie Mpama, led militant struggles of communities against poor housing and corrupt officials. In the midst of the rolling waves of semi-insurrectionary struggle, in the 1980s, it was a communist, Matthew Goniwe, who first pioneered on South African soil the building of organs of popular power.
Rural activism - In the 1920s SP Bunting worked in the deep rural areas of the Transkei, in the 1940s and 50s communist militant Alpheus Madiba mobilised in the north amongst peasants and also among migrants in Johannesburg from these rural areas. These are just two of countless examples of a long tradition of communist organisation amongst the peasantry and landless and rural poor of our country.
Co-operatives and community work - in the 1940s, Dora Tamana pioneered a cooperative movement in the informal settlements of the Cape Flats, a tradition that has been taken forward into the present by a new generation of young communists.
A party guerrilla fighters and martyrs - through the bitter years of minority rule, Party militants have been among the first in sacrifice - from Johannes Nkosi, gunned down in 1930 for leading an anti-pass campaign, through to an outstanding 1976 generation of courageous young communists, among them Petros Linda Jobane ("Gordon Dikebu"), the Lion of Chiawelo, who surrounded and alone held off the apartheid police, down to his last bullet. The Party of Chris Hani remembers and salutes all of its heroes and martyrs.
A party of internationalism - the earliest founders of the Communist Party in South Africa, among them David Ivon Jones, who wrote about the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution while it was unfolding, helped to bring an internationalist perspective into our own local struggles. That is a tradition that lives on today - a new generation of communists is active in the Cuban solidarity struggle, in taking up solidarity with the workers and poor in Zimbabwe, Swaziland, and with the oppressed everywhere in the world.
These are the traditions of struggle that have been passed down through generations of South African communists. We have made them part of a living legacy, not just for the SACP, but also for all progressive forces here in country and elsewhere in the world.
15 years ago, with the democratic breakthrough of April 1994, collectively as a liberation movement we won a major victory. But the democratic breakthrough was only a partial victory as we said very clearly at the time. New challenges emerged. There were the challenges of governance, and of a rapid development of new class differentiation within the black majority, and, indeed, within the liberation movement itself. The mid-1990s were also a period in world history, in which imperialist forces, organised around a neo-liberal ideology, were at their most arrogant and triumphalist. After the fall of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, confidence in socialism faltered in many parts of the world.
As we mark our 88th anniversary, we are proud to say that here in SA we kept the red flag flying high throughout this period. In fact, the SACP grew in strength, influence and numbers. But, of course, none of this was achieved without a battle. In the first place, the dominant capitalist class within our country and its wide range of ideological mouth-pieces have waged a predictable and incessant battle to deprive the SACP of resources, to sow disinformation about the Party and its leading personalities, and, when these fail, to wage a scare campaign reminiscent of the old apartheid regime's "rooi-gevaar" strategies.
Unfortunately, but also predictably, many of these same themes were taken up by forces from within our liberation movement, in particular by personalities associated with what we have characterised as the "1996 class project" - an attempt to divert the national liberation movement into narrow bourgeois democratic objectives, and to strike an implicit social pact between a new governing elite and the old economic centres of power.
It is a matter of pride for the SACP that, in seeking to advance this agenda, the leading protagonists of the "1996 class project" had to identify the SACP as their principal obstacle. For several years, tens of thousands of communists throughout SA had to endure insults and marginalisation, not just from the usual capitalist quarters, but from elements of the leadership of our own movement. A central pillar of the "1996 class project" was to goad the SACP into walking out of the ANC - the better to expunge any influence of progressive ideas on the liberation movement.
In this climate, a few Party comrades, some of them formerly in the leadership of the Party, "crossed the floor". Others became disheartened, and some of these joined the small chorus on the ultra-left, advising the Party to "go it alone". In this, ironically, they ended up recommending exactly what the "1996 class project" sought to achieve for its own purposes.
Despite all of this turbulence, the SACP majority remained focused on our strategic objective - to advance, consolidate and defend a worker and poor-biased national democratic revolution as the road to South African socialism. We understood that this meant building working class hegemony in all sites of power - the state, the liberation movement, the economy, in our communities and on the ideological front. In particular, the SACP understood that working class hegemony could only be built through popular mobilisation and activism. In recent years the SACP has launched a series of mass-based Red October campaigns for the transformation of the financial sector, for rural transformation, for decent public transport, for transformed health-care and for the building of a cooperative movement.
By remaining focused on our strategic programme, through affirming a dedicated Communist discipline, through hard-work, the SACP together with hundreds of thousands of principled cadres in the ANC and COSATU, successfully weathered and finally defeated the "1996 class project". That defeat was consolidated at the December 2007 ANC national conference and through the critical resolutions emanating from that conference.
But we are under no illusions that this defeat means that the same (or very similar) challenges and agendas will not reappear, or that the project does not live on in some regions of our country. The leading personalities in the 1996 class project have suffered an historic defeat. That is a fact, and it is a good thing. But there were objective class forces that lay behind the project and these are liable to reassert themselves in varying forms.
The Party will remain vigilant. Our approach will remain consistent. We remain committed to a multi-class but working class biased national democratic revolution led by the ANC. Our vanguard task is not to become narrowly workerist, but to ensure that we help to empower the working class of SA to play its revolutionary role in LEADING other classes and strata, especially the urban and rural poor, and the impoverished black lower middle strata in the struggle for democracy and socialism.
The key tasks in the present are, as we have agreed in our ANC-led Alliance election manifesto - jobs, health-care for all, better education, rural transformation and rolling back the scourge of crime and corruption.
Communist Cadres to the front...
During this anniversary we have already launched a programme of red forums whose aim is to deepen communist activism amongst the people. These include the following:
•· Mobilisation of the workers and communities to effectively participate in the implementation of the five key priorities as contained in the ANC Manifesto - building a strong COSATU to create decent work; building local people's education committees for free, quality education for the poor; building health committees for implementation of the National Health Insurance; building street committees to fight crime; and building people's land committees for rural development and agrarian transformation
•· Through these red forums we are also launching our campaign to organize and mobilize for the implementation of the National Health Insurance (NHI). The capitalist classes in the health sector, together with their lackeys and the media have already started a campaign to oppose the introduction of the NHI. The NHI aims to ensure universal access to affordable and quality health care for all, with the rich subsidizing the poor, and no up-front payment for health services. As part of this campaign to defend the NHI, the SACP further calls and will campaign for an end to the outsourcing of services in the public health system and for the return of all outsourced services into the hands of public health institutions
•· Our red forums are also focusing on the impact of the current economic crisis on the workers and the poor, especially the role of the financial sector in worsening the conditions of our people. With the economic recession there is an increase in bank repossessions of houses, blacklisting and retrenchments. The SACP calls upon the workers and the poor to join in revitalizing our financial sector campaign for the banks and other financial institutions to play a role in cushioning our people from the worst of this recession as required by the NEDLAC Framework agreement.
The SACP understands that there are many challenges facing our people on service delivery. We however strongly condemn attempts by a criminal element to try and hijack people's protests by engaging in violence, looting, destruction of property and xenophobic. We call upon all our structures to intensify our Know Your Neighbourhood Campaign to ensure that we constructively deal with the problems in our communities.
The SACP supports all legitimate struggles by the working class for a living wage. We call upon employers to seek to accommodate these legitimate demands of a working class ravaged by a recession. We however condemn opportunistic attempts by some of those who lost in the 2009 elections to try and project and use these legitimate working class struggles as an attack on the ANC government.
As we celebrate our 88th anniversary, we South African communists cherish the great revolutionary legacy bequeathed to us by the giants of our revolutionary struggle - Moses Kotane, JB Marks, Moses Mabhida, Josie Mpama, Dora Tamana, Ruth First, Joe Slovo and Chris Hani. But we also remember the many tens of thousands of rank-and-file communist Party militants who have gone before us. We dip our Red Flag in their honour.
A LUTA CONTINUA!
SOCIALISM IS THE FUTURE...BUILD IT NOW!
Issued by the SACP
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